MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

When Spain Sounds Like France (and France Sounds Like China)

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

On a number of key issues, from decoupling from China, to China’s role as a broker in negotiations on the war in Ukraine, to multipolarity, France seems to align more closely with Beijing than with Washington. And on each of those key issues, Spain seems to sound a lot like France.

antiwar.com

by Ted Snider

In April, French President Emmanuel Macron emerged from three days of meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing sounding as comfortable talking to Beijing as he does talking to Washington.

The US is pressuring Europe to decouple from China by reconsidering their relationship and breaking their significant economic ties. But when Macron traveled to China, his travel companions were a crowd of French business executives. And they weren’t there to discuss breaking economic ties with China. Instead, Macron declared that “any decoupling, or “de-linking,” is not good for Europe, given the vast economic interests at stake.” He rejected the US insistence that “differences over political systems that make Europe and China ‘rivals’ should . . . lead to the ‘decoupling’ and ‘escalating tensions’.” Far from breaking economic ties and ending the relationship, France’s aim is to “reinforce those ties” and “re-launch a strategic and global partnership with China.”

This independent stance, which Macron has frequently referred to as “strategic autonomy,” was to be just the first of several comments that sounded more like Beijing than like Washington. Macron was independent, but he was not alone. Charles Michel, the head of the European Council, after saying that “There has been a leap forward on strategic autonomy compared to several years ago,” revealed that “On the issue of the relationship with the United States, it’s clear that there can be nuances and sensitivities around the table of the European Council. Some European leaders wouldn’t say things the same way that Emmanuel Macron did … I think quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.”

One of those European leaders may be Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Weeks before Macron went to China, Sanchez blazed the trail. Seeking a more balanced trade relationship with China, Sanchez announced agreements to increase Spanish exports to China and Chinese tourism to Spain. Sanchez “also wants access to China’s rare earth minerals.” He expressed a willingness to “deepen bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation, especially cooperation in areas including electric vehicles, green energy and digital economy . . . and jointly promote further development of Spain-China relations.” Like France, Spain seems to be holding out against US demands to decouple from China.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Staggering Mind Control Program in Florida

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

And, RNA injected into mice at MIT

https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/a-staggering-mind-control-program-in-florida

JON RAPPOPORT

The staggering ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion’ mind control program at the University of Florida; An entire bureaucracy; This is the future NOW; It has to be crushed

The University of Florida.

An entity in the State University System.

Endowment: $2.4 billion.

Annual budget: $6 billion.

Students: 56,000.

Staff: 14,800.

Christopher F. Rufo

exposes (see also here and here and here) the University of Florida Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program and the details:

The HR department held a training to lecture employees about their “white privilege,” “white fragility,” and the “‘unearned advantages’ of whiteness.” As part of their “personal journey,” white employees were encouraged to confront their pathological whiteness.

They learned mantras from twelve-step programs for overcoming their whiteness, including Racists Anonymous: “I have come to admit that I am powerless over my addiction to racism”; “We admit our collective history is rooted in white supremacy.”

University of Florida has created a radical DEI bureaucracy that promotes racial preferences in faculty hiring, encourages white employees to engage with a 12-step program called Racists Anonymous, and maintains segregated scholarships that violate civil rights law.

Officially, the university has reported that it hosts 31 DEI initiatives at a cost of $5 million per year. But I have obtained internal documents via Sunshine Law requests revealing the stunning scope, scale, and radicalism of UF’s DEI bureaucracy, which is embedded everywhere.

In 2020, UF planned out a huge number of diversity initiatives, including mandatory diversity training, an entire year focused on “racism,” a presidential task force to explore the university’s racist past, and recommendations for banning “historic racist imagery.”

In 2021, the university moved to create a massive “DEI infrastructure” and deploy DEI cadres to each division, school, and college. The embedded cadres were tasked with administering loyalty surveys to test faculty and staff’s “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

According to documents, UF has created 1,018 “DEI initiatives” and the ideology has penetrated nearly all of its divisions: 73 percent “have a DEI committee” and “DEI officer”; 70 percent “espoused commitment to DEI”; 53 percent “have a DEI strategic plan.”

The university encourages racial preferences in hiring, with favored practices including “specific formal training in [DEI],” advertising jobs through “DEI identity” groups, using an “equity specialist” for search committees, and engaging in race-based recruiting and benchmarks.

—end of Rufo statement—

He paints a picture of university infiltration on a massive scale.

It would be impossible to install such a program without key players in MANY key positions.

The rest of the university employees are scared sheep and willing foot soldiers.

—The 12-step program as overt mind control.

People surrender their will, power of choice, intelligence, and sign on as slaves waiting for orders from above.

As I’ve been writing for some time now, these programs have nothing to do with equality of opportunity or meritocracy. They’re about who holds the power.

The rulers and enforcers of the USSR and China would find the U of Florida structure quite familiar.

Tyrants form collectives. It hardly matters what the “subject matter” is. The whole point is subjugation.

At the U of Florida, no doubt there was a point, along the way, when supervisors, department heads, deans, executives, and boards thought: “Well, all this is somewhat troubling, but we can live with it. It’ll progress to a certain level and then stop. These people couldn’t be actually trying to take over the University.”

But these people were, and they did.

That’s always the way it is. People don’t rise up and squash the criminals. They wait. And then one day it’s too late.

The criminals rely on The Group. The force of The Group. Not the ideas. Not the philosophy. Not the logic. Not on anything sensible. The thoughts the criminals spout and the theories—those are just the cover. The root is group intimidation. The calculation is: “We have enough force to overwhelm the individual.”

It’s war.

The idiots and the cowards and the passive ones refuse to see this.

That tells you something about the awesome lack of integrity residing in these high-minded professors who teach at the university level.

They turn their eyes away as a mob grabs control.

Read the Whole Article

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Despite U.S. Denials… Kiev Regime Hasn’t Gone Rogue With Strikes on Moscow – It’s an Obedient Cat’s Paw

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

Moscow’s dilemma is how to show its Western aggressor that playing with fire means getting burned – without inciting a catastrophic Third World War.

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/06/01/despite-us-denials-kiev-regime-hasnt-gone-rogue-with-strikes-moscow-its-obedient-cats-paw/

Finian Cunningham

If the United States and its NATO lackeys really wanted to avoid a direct war with Russia, then they know what to do: stop arming the reactionary Kiev regime and get down to serious diplomacy.

This insanely dangerous conflict could end right now.

This week saw a swarm of military drones attack the Russian capital. The Russian authorities claimed that all of the unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down or electronically disabled, but not without some of the aircraft inflicting damage on civilian apartment blocks.

Nearly four weeks ago, a double drone attack was launched on the Kremlin Senate building close to where President Vladimir Putin has a residence.

Moscow has never been attacked in such a symbolic way since the Great Patriotic War when the Soviet Union was fighting Nazi Germany at the very gates of the capital.

Elsewhere across the Russian Federation, Ukrainian drones have targeted major Russian oil and gas installations, as well as military air bases deep inside its territory. Latest reports say Russian children are being evacuated from the Belgorod and Bryansk westerly regions due to constant heavy shelling by Ukrainian forces. Those regions have also seen commando-style incursions by militants using American-supplied armored vehicles. The CIA media front Radio Free Europe is evidently delighted by the anticipated sapping of Russian morale.

Russia is incrementally being subjected to a tightening aggressive vice, which when viewed in perspective presents a shocking attempted assault on its existential interests. Moscow has warned that its national defense doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons if its existential interests are threatened. The U.S. and its NATO partners are provocatively shaping the Ukraine conflict into Russia’s existential concerns. The aggression is being fully directed and intensified by Washington and its NATO accomplices, in particular Britain.

The nearly 15-month conflict in Ukraine seems to be spiraling uncontrollably toward a direct war between the United States and Russia, the world’s two biggest nuclear powers. Russia did not want this conflict. Its proposals for diplomacy and dialogue over geopolitical security concerns due to NATO expansion were dismissed out of hand by Washington and its European minions in the weeks before the Ukraine war erupted on February 24 last year.

We need to be clear: the onus is on Washington to halt the slide toward world catastrophe.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Biggest Problem With The Western Left Is That It Doesn’t Exist

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

I’ll bet there would be of lot of Easterners that would be happy if there were no Eastern left, but there aren’t because they are dead. I don’t like government in general but I do like free markets that prevented me from getting polio, help me get around in my car, let me listen to good music, I don’t like phones but they occasionally come in handy. I may be blind but I don’t see communists doing much beneficial.

https://substack.com/inbox/post/125500811

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

The biggest problem with the western left is that it doesn’t exist.

To look at a lot of leftist discourse today you might think the left’s biggest problem is that some leftists have the wrong beliefs about this or that issue, or that the left pays too much or not enough attention to identity politics, or places too much or not enough emphasis on electoral politics, or is too sympathetic toward enemies of the US empire or not sympathetic enough, or that this or that faction gets it all wrong — but it’s not. The biggest problem is that there aren’t anywhere remotely close to enough leftists to get anything done in the west today.

And by leftists I of course don’t mean Democrats or “progressives” or anyone who just wants a few adjustments to be made to the capitalist empire so that they can afford medicine or a college degree or whatever. I mean real socialists, communists and anarchists who oppose capitalism and imperialism and seek the drastic, revolutionary changes this civilization urgently needs. Those who understand that the system is not broken and in need of repair, but is working exactly as intended and is in need of complete dismantling.

This latter category has barely any meaningful existence in the western world. The “western left” in modern times is either controlled opposition or what amounts to a glorified online message board. That’s not our fault; the empire has poured vast amounts of wealth and effort into making that happen. But we do need to be real about it, and we do need to fix it.

And it’s just so strange to me that this doesn’t dominate all leftist discourse all the time. The fact that the western left is a tiny politically impotent minority with nowhere near the numbers needed to accomplish its goals is the single most significant thing about the western left, by a long, long way.

https://twitter.com/PolitsturmInter/status/1408164275500158977

I mean, if you were a general who was setting off to war, and you only had a handful of soldiers to fight against an entire enemy nation, that would be the single most glaring fact in your attention. You wouldn’t be spending your time arguing about military strategies or the history of equestrian combat, and you certainly wouldn’t be wasting your energy fighting against those who are basically on your side. Front and center of your attention would be the fact that you don’t have enough troops to fight this war, and how can you get more.

If you’re an architect who’s been hired to construct a skyscraper, and your workforce shows up and it’s just one guy with a plastic toy hammer, that’s going to be the focus of your attention. You’re not going to be poring over your blueprints and books on architectural theory and musing about the finer points of foundational integrity, you’re going to be trying to figure out how to get more workers to build this damn thing.

So you’d think that would be the case with the western left as well, because we find ourselves in more or less the same kind of situation. But it isn’t. To look at the writings of a lot of western leftists you’d think the best way to enact your ideology in the world is to spend your time arguing with other leftists using esoteric Marxist jargon about obscure points that nobody outside your tiny echo chamber knows about or cares about, or to sit back smugly knowing better than everyone else while waiting for the contradictions inherent in capitalism to bring about its demise.

If you look at organizing and demonstrating it’s not much better. You’ve got sparsely attended meetings with increasingly atomized sects, antiwar protests with a handful of people and one banner, and some LARPers dressed in black punching racists and transphobes here and there to make believe they’re fighting a real revolution against real power. Which is the same as nothing.

The first and foremost priority of the western left should be to create more western leftists. You don’t do that by having all the correct opinions and reading all the correct books and proving yourself the most correct in argument after argument, and you don’t do it by waiting for western material conditions to deteriorate like a bunch of fundamentalists awaiting the Rapture. You do it by reaching out to people, winning hearts and minds, showing them that everything they’ve been taught about their nation and their world is a lie, and showing them that things can be better.

I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to address this dilemma, I’m just highlighting a massive, glaring problem that doesn’t get the tiniest fraction of the attention that it should get. I address this problem the best way I know how with my own work, but I’m just one person with one mind. I hope to see many more minds pointed at this issue in the future, so that we can all come up with solutions and fix this thing.

_________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon, Paypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Amish and the Plandemic…PAY ATTENTION!

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

Trusting in God, not the government god Fauci.

We live along side the Amish. I didn’t see bodies piled along side the road reeking of the ‘rona.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Wall Street Journal

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/hypocrisy-thy-name-is-wall-street-journal/

by Walter E. Block

cube 7046596 1280

The Wall Street Journal of March 31, 2023 (page A20, if you must know) featured this headline: “Turkey’s Parliament Ratifies NATO bid.” Here is the first paragraph of this entry:

“The Turkish parliament ratified Finland’s entrance into the NATO on Thursday, removing the last obstacle to a historic expansion of the alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” [Emphasis Added]

Waitasec. If event B is a response to event A, A must necessarily come first in time, B only afterward. If B occurs first, this event can hardly be considered a response to A.

Let us do a little bit of history here. During the Cold War, NATO and the Warsaw Pact contended with one another. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union ended. What should have then happened, for a true peace, was both military alliances should have disbanded. Or perhaps, turned into an organization that comprised both of them. But the Warsaw Pact dissolved, and NATO remained.

East and West Germany were combined in 1990. Promises were then made by NATO not to expand in an eastward direction. This agreement was broken upon numerous occasions.

And when, pray tell, did Russia invade Ukraine? Why, it was not until 2022, decades after NATO began its eastward move.

So what was a “response” to what? Obviously, the Russians responsively engaged in a war not so much against Ukraine; rather, in confrontation with all of the NATO countries. NATO instigated this war between Russia and Ukraine by expanding eastward. Russia, for many years, protested and warned against this aggressive activity, but to no avail. Finally, in 2022, this country took responsive action.

Robert D. Kaplan (also writing in The Wall Street Journal, titled “Putin’s Shakespearian Demons”) is having none of this. Suggests this worthy: “Would Europe today be at peace with Mr. Putin’s Russia had NATO not expanded east after the cold war…? Certainly not.”

Does he give any reasons for this contention of his? Certainly not. Instead, he waxes eloquent about alternative history. He offers his thoughts on what he imagines would have occurred in the absence of the NATO eastward march. To summarize: Putin’s Russia would have been a bully, controlling the areas between Germany and his country, and impoverishing them all.

One way to refute this is to consider Russia’s, well, the USSR’s westward march. You say there was no such westward march? You are mistaken. They “marched” into Cuba in 1962 and parked a few weapons of mass destruction there. (To contextualize that initiative, at that time the U.S. had located similar weaponry in several countries surrounding the USSR. Further, these countries had joined NATO; Greece and Turkey in 1952; West Germany in1955.)

How did the United States react to what it regarded as a serious provocation on its very borders? (Cuba is only 90 miles away from Florida.) Uncle Sam organized a naval blockade of the island nation. But a blockade is an act of war! If Ukraine were an island, quite possibly Russia would not have physically invaded it. It might well have followed the example of the U.S. and blockaded that island of Ukraine. Hey, I can also do a bit of alternative history and alternative geography to boot! I have learned from the master of this sort of thing, Robert D. Kaplan.

In other words, the U.S. did in Cuba almost precisely what it is now blaming Russia for doing in Ukraine. There is a word for this sort of thing. Wait, I think I’ve got it…Yes, hypocrisy!

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Sultan 2.0 will heavily tilt east

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

It’s not that Erdogan has a scheme to head east at the west’s expense. It’s just that the world’s grandest infrastructure, development, and geopolitical projects are all in the east today.

https://thecradle.co/article-view/25429/the-sultan-20-will-heavily-tilt-east

ByPepe Escobar

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Pepe-Escobar-on-Erdogan-and-the-Turkish-elections.jpg

Photo Credit: The Cradle

The collective west was dying to bury him – yet another strategic mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in deep Anatolia.

In the end, Recep Tayyip Erdogan did it – again. Against all his shortcomings, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it “my way,” comfortably retaining Turkiye’s presidency after naysayers had all but buried him.

The first order of geopolitical priority is who will be named Minister of Foreign Affairs. The prime candidate is Ibrahim Kalin – the current all-powerful Erdogan press secretary cum top adviser.

Compared to incumbent Cavusoglu, Kalin, in theory, may be qualified as more pro-west. Yet it’s the Sultan who calls the shots. It will be fascinating to watch how Turkiye under Erdogan 2.0 will navigate the strengthening of ties with West Asia and the accelerating process of Eurasia integration.

The first immediate priority, from Erdogan’s point of view, is to get rid of the “terrorist corridor” in Syria. This means, in practice, reigning in the US-backed Kurdish YPG/PYD, who are effectively Syrian affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – which is also the issue at the heart of a possible normalization of relations with Damascus.

Now that Syria has been enthusiastically welcomed back to the Arab League after a 12-year freeze, a Moscow-brokered entente between the Turkish and Syrian presidents, already in progress, may represent the ultimate win-win for Erdogan: allowing control of Kurds in north Syria while facilitating the repatriation of roughly 4 million refugees (tens of thousands will stay, as a source of cheap labor).

The Sultan is at his prime when it comes to hedging his bets between east and west. He knows well how to profit from Turkiye’s status as a key NATO member – complete with one of its largest armies, veto power, and control of the entry to the uber-strategic Black Sea.

And all that while exercising real foreign policy independence, from West Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean.

So expect Erdogan 2.0 to remain an inextinguishable source of irritation for the neocons and neoliberals in charge of US foreign policy, along with their EU vassals, who will never refrain from trying to subdue Ankara to fight the Russia-China-Iran Eurasia integration entente. The Sultan, though, knows how to play this game beautifully.

How to manage Russia and China

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Facebook and Google Allies Fight Revenue Sharing with Journalists by Invoking Hate Speech, Misinfo and ‘Straight White Men’

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

Silicon Valley is battling the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would force big tech companies to share advertising revenue with journalists.

https://www.leefang.com/p/facebook-and-google-allies-fight?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

LEE FANG

Facebook and Google are fighting a new California tax designed to boost local journalism by claiming that the proposal will instead spawn an avalanche of hate speech and misinformation.

The new tax, said Krisztian Katona, vice president of CCIA, a lobbying group for Google and Facebook, would reduce the ability to “take down hate speech and fight misinformation.”

Chamber of Progress, another lobby shop funded by Google and Facebook, and run by a former Google executive, similarly warned that the bill is a “boon for disinformation outlets” such as Fox News.

The deceptive arguments are designed to splinter support for the California Journalism Preservation Act, or AB 886, a California bill that would force social media platforms to share advertising revenue generated from news articles with publishers and media outlets. If enacted, the major tech companies, which profit from the advertising revenue generated by numerous news articles, would be forced into an arbitration process to determine how much revenue they would have to share with news outlets.

The tech industry’s claims about “hate speech” and “misinformation” are largely unsubstantiated. Social media firms already publish all types of content without sharing advertising revenue. The over-the-top rhetoric instead aims to turn a fight over advertising revenue in which Democrats are inclined to sympathize with local news outlets, into a battle over controversial speech and ideas that many liberal lawmakers have a predisposition to see as an existential threat. Since Democrats have a supermajority in California, these kinds of appeals could be enough to doom the legislation.

Opponents also used liberal tropes about race and gender to decry the legislation in a committee hearing about the bill in April.

Katharine Trendacosta of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the current state of online media helped people like her against the “general trend of media which is towards straight white males.” This legislation, she continued, “is a wealth transfer to these same billionaires.”

In a surprising retort, Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Republican from Riverside who supports AB 886, asked Trendacosta about EFF’s ties to Google, a question she declined to directly answer. In the past, EFF, which is a nonprofit, has received funding from Google. In 2012, Google named EFF in court disclosures as one of the many groups it counts on to advocate on its behalf.

Big Tech has a history of using liberal rhetoric and targeted identity-based political giving to ingratiate itself with Democrats who might otherwise regulate them. Google, in particular, has supported identitarian causes to gain influence with Democratic politicians.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

Mexican Cartel Spotted With US Anti-Tank Weapons On The Texas Border!

Posted by M. C. on June 3, 2023

A Mexican television news station has reported that a Mexican cartel operating near the Texas border has been spotted with US or Norwegian anti-tank missiles of the kind being sent to Ukraine by the boatload. Is Washington’s insane Ukraine policy coming home to roost? Also today: The Taliban use US weapons in border skirmish with Iran – what could go wrong?

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Question of Intelligence

Posted by M. C. on June 2, 2023

Elon Musk, a good guy, is said to have fallen out with Larry Page, a baddie, because of the latter’s lack of concern for humankind when it comes to AI. I’m not surprised. Musk says that Page wants a digital superintelligence in hopes of becoming a digital God.

A Question of Intelligence

Taki

Source: Bigstock

Were it not for my age, I’d be worried, but at this stage of the game I couldn’t give a flying you-know-what. Mind you, I have two children—a daughter and a son—both in their early 30s, and four grandchildren—two boys and two girls—some still in diapers, and that does keep me up at night.

And it should also worry anyone whose brain hasn’t been fried by too many hamburgers, asinine TV commercials, or Hollywood tripe, especially when Mark Zuckerberg speaks glowingly about artificial intelligence and his company’s ambitions to turn us all into zombies. Here it is in a nutshell: Are computers going to kill us all, or help us live forever? The canonical worry is that it is difficult—or perhaps impossible—to ensure that any artificial general intelligence we create will be aligned with human values.

Zombie humans like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and their ilk insist that AI will be able to invent novel means of capturing carbon from the atmosphere, create better batteries, cure cancer, and make us all good-looking. (In the case of Zuckerberg I am certain it cannot.) The rising prowess of AI even has the Sammy Glicks of Hollywood worried. Soon it will be able to replicate actors, produce screenplays, and substitute for beauties such as Lily James and Keira Knightley. (Talk about a criminal act—we’ll have a world of Silicon Valley freaks but no Lily or Keira.)

Yes, sports fans, what was once considered theoretical is now close to reality. If you think today’s culture has gone to pot (pun intended), imagine a culture created by nonhuman intelligence—something like a Soros brain totally creating and controlling our lives.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »